A debut novel by a Siena faculty member is garnering rave reviews from national literary outlets.
You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg, M.F.A., associate professor of English, is due out May 2 from Counterpoint Press. Publishers Weekly gave the novel a starred review and called it “stunning” and “exceptional.”
As a once-bustling mall prepares to shut its doors for the final time, the residents of an upstate New York town must reckon with a shocking act that forces them to reevaluate who they are in this “remarkable study of ordinary people’s extraordinary inner lives.”
Booklist called You Are Here “masterful and understated,” The Library Journal, ELLE and Goodreads are lauding it as well, and People magazine just named it Book of the Week in their latest issue. (See below) The American Booksellers Association listed it one of their Indie Next picks for May. (You know the newsletter put out by cool, independent booksellers? That’s Indie Next.)
“Metaphorically, the novel explores where people are in their lives, how the spaces we occupy can either help us or trap us.
There are five point-of-view characters in the novel, who each have a connection to the dying mall, and each one is at some sort of crossroads in their lives. The impending closing of the mall forces each to make decisions about what their next step will be.”
Karin Lin-Greenberg, M.F.A., associate professor of English
Lin-Greenberg will give readings from You Are Here on Wednesday, May 10 at 6PM at Northshire Books in Saratoga Springs, and another on Saturday, May 20 at 2PM at The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland.
Her novel was a sabbatical year project that grew out of her short story “The Sweeper of Hair,” which was a finalist for the Chicago Tribune’s annual Nelson Algren Literary Award for short fiction in 2018. That story serves as the novel’s first chapter.
